Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Beautiful morning broke on the pristine looking Fat Lady and the Ace deckhand and the Pilot awoke cursing a sinful pastime long practiced in downtown LaCrosse, all you can drink for $5. There was a new crewmember, who came aboard during the night. The Engineer had gone back to the Twin Cities and picked up the Girlfriend. The Girlfriend seemed very friendly and pleasant and gave no hint of the adventures ahead with her. I must say, I consider myself a semi-worldy man and have been to several county fairs and have seen the Snake Lady dance, but I was ill-prepared for what would unfold over the following days. I found myself sitting with her on the second deck, while waiting for the boat to get ready. I tried to work on my stuff as i watched her take a cookie from the galley and stuff into her more than ample cleavage. I was torn between complementing her on her ingenious way of moistening the overly dry M&M cookie and thinking, "My god, is this boat going to be big enough now"? The lifting of the cookie from her bosom and the question, "Do you want a bite of my cookie?", forced me in to hiding.
We then concentrated on the mission for the day, the highly anticipated getting fixed on Brennan's dry dock. No more plastic bags over cooling system cap, no pumping excess shaft alley water to cool the main engine, no buddy pump turned on every 10 minutes to cool generator, and the empty Miller High Life bottle can be recycled! We called Brennan's repair Superintendent, called the CP Rail bridge over the Black River, woke up Buck and started up the Black River. In all my years on the River, I had never went up the Black. As we passed through the tilting bridge we wondered if in the old days, before they built the new control house, if the bridge tender didn't sit in a Gimball? chair as the bridge tilted him to a 45 degree list. We wandered into one of the most concentrated and busy little harbors I've ever seen.
After many under coordinated phone conversations, we found a spot to tie off, which promptly blocked a work crew in. I said my hellos on the bank and quickly headed up for lunch with my old buddy Kent Pehler
. A good hour plus of lying to each other and using the "That is proprietary information' phrase on each other, I went to wait for the verdict on when and how we could be dry docked. It didn't take long. The supe came over and gave us the information I knew in St.Paul we would hear. "Too much risk, won't touch the boat! Built in 1954, the blueprints of the boat were long missing and too manythings could go wrong without a up to date picture of the bottom.
our tails between our legs, we searched for a place to tie off. Right next door was the worldwide headquarters of the Skipperliner yacht shipyard, excursion boat landing, restaurant, and most importantly, a marina with a dock big enough for the Lady. We thought getting out of the St. paul marina was tight. This marina made it look like an interstate. As we crept in I wondered what a 40+ ft Sea Ray would cost or how it would look without a bow. We landed without incident and sent the rest of the weekenders home. It left just the Engineer, the Girlfriend, the Captain, and the LaCrosse tour guide for the former two. Ah, what an evening. I haven't been with a first class bar disrupt0r since my youth spent in low places. It came to a head in a little bar downtown, that we had been in the previous evening. It caught my eye because the owner was showing old film of steamboats. We spent time talking about old river pictures and we heard how the UW LaCrosses' Murphy library was deficient in what they said they had for old river pictures and the bar owner was the real expert in town on river lore. That Mon. nite I decided to carry on the previous conversations and see what he had. The bar was filthy and the owner was sleeping in front of his computer and when we woke him, he turned and blinded us with his headlamp. "Sit down or get out of my bar", he snarled. A touch by the Girlfriend on his arm elicited an even stronger response with even better language. I thought, maybe he is a River man, he did have the swearing part down. When the Engineer came out of the head, I mentioned that headlight man wouldn't be able to put up with the Girlfriend and we should leave. I didn't wait for either and vacated the now hostile surroundings. Out on the sidewalk, I heard loud screaming emanating from the interior. My companions made a hurried exit with the proprietor in hot pursuit. "What caused that", I asked. The Engineer pointed at the Girlfriend and described how when things further deteriorated and the now ambulatory owner threatened to call the police. "What kind of geek says police and not cops?", he cried. "And what else?", I asked. It seems the Girlfriend then pulled down her pants and invited the owner to kiss her rear facing parts. Then the Engineer mentioned that maybe the owner should go back to his pedophile porn on the computer. And the night was still young. We did attempt to move away from the whirlwind the Girlfriend had become, but the Downtown was too small that night. A ride was finally procurred from the Birthday Girl and after pizza and the clock striking 0300, I had once again, enough fun in LaCrosse. Tomorrow would come the answer to or prayers at Skipperliner.

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